


Confessional

by SpicaV



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Cardassian Culture, F/M, Flirting, Friendship, Gen, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Relationship Discussions, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25512886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpicaV/pseuds/SpicaV
Summary: “'Arguing like that is foreplay for Cardassians, so I thought…' Jadzia let the rest what she thought hang out in the open, obviously waiting for Julian to fill in the blanks."Julian Bashir and Jadzia Dax use the opportunity of a sparring injury to bond over their separately evolving love lives. Julian explains why he cannot bring himself to take his relationship with Garak further, even though he deeply wants to.
Relationships: Jadzia Dax/Worf, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 10
Kudos: 89





	Confessional

The new literature on treating modulated phaser burns was much needed at this juncture; skirmishes with the Dominion factions were on the rise. The Jem’Hadar and Lethean peoples used unfamiliar weapons, and the current Federation medical technology was lacking. Some of the phaser wounds had not been able to fully heal using current dermal regeneration techniques, and the results were lasting scars that cast a silvery, spiderwebbed appearance over skin. Internal organs were another matter. Myalgia and hemorrhaging were common with these styles of phaser, and Doctor Julian Bashir suspected that this was the point. Whereas Federation, Romulan, and Klingon weapons tended to be straightforward shooters—unless changed by furtive and illegal modification—the Gamma Quadrant belligerents seemed designed to inflict as much  _ pain _ as possible before death.

The thought quite nauseated him. Bashir looked down at his half-eaten bowl of Quil’et-spice chili and found that he had lost his appetite. Few things unseated his ability to eat, but unfettered, deliberate cruelty was one of them. 

“Doctor Bashir,” Dax’s sweetest oh-love-you-my-friend voice drifted over his shoulder and Bashir looked up, relieved to put the dreary literature aside. Smiled when he saw a jubilant Jadzia and sheepish Lieutenant Commander Worf lingering by the doorway to the upper Promenade. They wore their sparring clothes, her in deep red, Worf in sedate black and silver. “Julian, I have a little problem.”

Jadzia looked down to her left hand, gingerly cradled in her right; the middle finger was discolored. Crooked angle. Likely fracture in her middle phalanx, dislocation from the proximal bone. 

“My, my, Jadzia, playing tennis with a cannon ball again?” Bashir stood and took her hand in his, turned it minutely in the muted light of Quark’s Bar. “Now you have done it, I am afraid. Off with you to the infirmary.”

“Doctor,” Worf said, obviously flustered, shoulders squared. “Sir, Lieutenant Commander Dax and I were sparring on the holodeck with the mek’leth and when she parried I—”

“Easy, Worf. You get to have all the fun and I get to take care of the aftermath.” Bashir smiled to show he was joking. Felt that Worf saw the smile as foolish, even if he relaxed at Bashir’s confidence. “I’ll take care of this, you stow the mek’leth. Your sparring partner will be as good as new in fifteen minutes.”

The Klingon bowed in gratitude, both of his strong hands wrapped around the hooked hilts of the blades. Who knew where he kept the weapons, now that he had moved his quarters into the cramped  _ Defiant _ . 

“You two are becoming quite the close companions,” Bashir teased as he walked with Jadzia down the spiral stairs to the infirmary. 

“It’s exhilarating, Julian! The part of me that is Curzon is so excited I can barely sleep at night. Curzon wasn’t exactly the athletic type, so getting private Klingon martial arts lessons is a dream fulfilled, one lifetime late.” She smiled down at her injury with an expression almost like affection. “Worf says that one is not considered a mek’leth master until one has had their forearms sliced at least nine times each.”

“Let us hope it will not come to that, shall we? Lights.” Bashir led her into his private office area, mindful of the sleeping Ferengi man in the main bay. He had taken a stray punch to the orbital bone in a bar fight. Doctor’s orders to rest, so that Quark wouldn’t call him back to bus tables for the rest of the evening. “Have a seat, Dax. And try not to yell too much when I set your finger.”

She gave him a startled look just as he pressed a deep-tissue analgesic hypo to her arm. Grinned. “You had me there for a split second. And for the record, I hope that it doesn’t come to eighteen arm slices before I reach proficiency. Otherwise I should just move into your quarters, for convenience sake.”

Bashir smiled to himself as he set the joint, nodded at the clean pop. “Excellent. Now just hold still and I’ll mend the fracture. You know, there was a time when I’d consider your willingness to move into my quarters an attempt at flirtation, Jadzia.”

She smiled, lowering her long lashes and going inward, into a memory or a world that he could not fathom. “I know. It was just for old time’s sake.” 

“Ah, so you’ve given your heart to Worf, have you?” Bashir fiddled with his osteo-regenerator, narrowing the beam and double checking the periosteum composition for Trill. 

“Not exactly.” A fine blush bloomed across her cheeks. “Not yet.”

“Mm hmm. Now hold still.” Bashir took her hand in his, gentle, because even though she could no longer feel pain he was aware of the damage already done. The regenerator hummed at a hypersonic level undetectable to Trill ears. Bashir, of course, heard it just fine. Though he mended such minor breaks weekly among a crew of thousands he never lost his sense of wonder in watching his patients heal, a bone straighten, discoloration lessen, a healthy pallor or tint reappearing in the flesh. What he most liked was the relief in his patients’ eyes. The widening of a smile or relaxing of bunched muscle, a grateful giggle at the release of tension. Even more impassive species, such as Vulcans or Maurites, were not above a relieved sigh or a nod of thanks whilst looking deep into his eyes. 

“What about your own paramour?” Jadzia flexed her long fingers once Bashir had released them.

“Who, Leeta?” He reset the regeneratior to its charge setting. “She’s fine. I believe the dear girl has a roving eye. I caught her ogling Rom, of all people.”

“You’re not upset?” Jadzia’s crystal blue eyes sparkled with a mix of mischievousness and genuine worry. How she mixed at-odds emotions like that he could never tell, but she was a master.

“I am upset, but Leeta and I… well, it’s more physical than anything. She’s a dear woman but conversations are sometimes lacking.” Bashir flopped down into his chair and rotated it in half circles, a nervous tick after a long day. “She’s intelligent. Don’t let the dabo-girl bodysuit fool you. It’s just that we are interested in very different things. She’s more interested in dabbling in relay circuitry and I’m more into…”

“Literature.” Jadzia put her feet up on his desk and her hands across her taut belly. Now the kittenish amusement glittered high in her eyes. Irrepressible. 

“Yes, literature. And dressing in bombardier jackets and war kilts.” He nodded to a hump of leather and sheep’s wool on a shelf, his kit for slaughtering Jerries. 

“Leeta’s not the paramour I was thinking of.” 

“Who, then? If it’s that Bajoran woman last week with the dancer’s silhouette I can explain—it all began when the Bolian barber and this Rixxian temple priestess were looking for two Tarkalean cymbals and a vat of depilatory cream—”

“No, not the Bajoran dancer. I mean Garak.” And here her grin dawned wide, brighter than any smile she had worn that evening.

“Garak.” Bashir deadpanned. Leaned back in his chair as if defeated.

“Yes.” She shrugged artfully, eyes dancing. “I saw you and him getting quite close when you were arguing about the fourth act of  _ Henry V. _ He was close enough to kiss you. Did he?”

“No.”

“Arguing like that is foreplay for Cardassians, so I thought…” She let the rest what she thought hang out in the open, obviously waiting for Julian to fill in the blanks.

He sighed in annoyance, thinking of Garak on that particular afternoon. The intense blue eyes so close to his that he was sure he had gone cross-eyed. Warm breath, the subtle, smoky smell of his friend’s skin. Had the nerve to call Henry’s St. Crispian’s Day speech ostentatious, which was the pot calling the kettle black as far as Julian was concerned. Garak had listened to Julian’s counterpoints with his head tilted and lips parted, poised for rebuttal at any moment. “Arguing is not foreplay for Cardassians, it’s  _ flirting.” _

“So you were flirting.”

“No. Maybe a little.” 

“He was in your personal space, Julian. And you weren’t exactly pulling away.” Here Jadzia arched her eyebrows, bit her lip. The smile never left her eyes in moments like these, when she was coaxing someone out of their shell.

Bashir mused that it wasn’t just her pretty face that made her so beautiful; it was the intelligence winging like a bird behind her eyes, the effortless flit from thought to thought and curiosity that lit her whole body. The honest warmth and want for her friends to be fulfilled, happy. He would always be a little in love with her.

“I like it when Elim is in my personal space.” He looked down to his hands, smiled. Thinking of Garak’s body heat, the faint blue blush that appeared on his forehead and shoulder ridges whenever their debates became spirited. “Heated” was too strong a word; there was always a mutual delight that softened frustration over a staunch point of view, and they both leaned in when the argument reached its zenith. “I like it when he gets that ‘about to pounce’ look in his eyes. The way his mouth stays open, just a little.”

“He is scenting you, you know.”

“What, like a flehmen response?” Bashir was both amused and unnerved by the idea. “You think he has a vomeronasal organ in the roof of his mouth?” 

“Why not? You have surely seen him standing with his mouth slightly open at social gatherings. Or on the Promenade. Or when he made a quick appearance at Odo’s 1000th Arrest party last month. What else do you think he is doing? Unless you think it’s allergies.”

“I am not sure. The physiological files that Enabran Tain gave me were basic gross anatomy. Nothing about the finite nervous system or lymphatic system or psychological health. Just enough to patch Elim together if he’s sliced open. Everything that I know about Cardassian physiology comes from those charts and guinea pigging on Elim himself. You should have seen what happened when I gave him a dose of trianalgesix. I had no idea that someone could break out in that many hives. Sent him into an early molt. I haven’t had opportunity to look at the roof of his mouth.”

“Why not just kiss him and feel around in there while you’re at it?” Jadzia laughed, looking even more impossibly lovely. The wine-colored bodysuit she wore brought out the auburn in her deep brown hair.

“I could see  _ that _ going over well. ‘Hold still, darling, and let me check you for tonsils whilst I’ve got my tongue down your throat.’” Bashir rolled his eyes, then considered. “Still. It might not be a  _ bad _ idea.”

“Juuulian, you  _ wouldn’t _ .”

“No, I wouldn’t. Not if I want to give up my license and spend a good few weeks in the brig awaiting a hearing.”

“So, have you  _ ever _ thought of taking these verbal matches a bit further?”

“Yes.”

“Why haven’t you?”

Bashir considered, tilted his head. Called the lights down 25% to quell the mild headache that had been growing in the base of his skull. Stood and offered Jadzia some tea from the replicator. Sat down with the twin blue mugs and saw that she was not going to let the question go; she held it like a bird between feline teeth and asked “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Why haven’t you taken your ‘debates’ with Garak further than leaning into each other’s personal space? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your chest heaves a little when you two are that close. And you lick your lips a lot.” Jadzia sipped her tea with the same satisfaction of the proverbial cat eating the damned canary. “It’s  _ incriminating, _ Julian.”

“Incriminating. Yes, I suppose it is.” He contemplated his reflection in his tea. “I’d like nothing more than to further our relationship, Jadzia, but it wouldn’t be… prudent.”

“Why not?”

“Because sex is… Listen, I love sex: it’s wonderful, it’s casual, it feels damn good. But having a fling here and there is one thing; having sex with someone you already care about is…”   


“Another thing entirely.” She sighed. “It advances your relationship in ways that can’t be undone.”

“Exactly.” 

“So you do care about him.”

“Immensely so.”

They let that phrase and its import hang in the air for a long moment, both looking away, thinking thoughts that interwove, overlapped, drew back. Bashir knew that she was thinking of her own relationship with Worf, the obvious sexual and intellectual attraction between them that mirrored—in some ways—his own relationship with Garak. But whereas Worf was an honorable man and one whom she could set her watch by, Garak was devious, an almost compulsive liar, not just two-faced but multi-faceted. Never tell the truth where a lie would do. How could one reconcile that in love?

“In other words, you can’t trust him,” Jadzia said, and Bashir flinched. Apparently he had been musing aloud. “And you can’t fall in love with someone who you cannot trust.”

“Yes.” Bashir was surprised by the strength of his grief at this admission. Garak was otherwise his ideal: charming, intelligent, strong, wily, physically intriguing. He reminded him a bit of a boyfriend he had in med school, a Betazoid named Aurelo Taran, who had debated with Julian on the virtues or vices of Denebrian autobiographical opera. Their relationship had dissolved due to disparate assignments; he had been sent to Deep Space 9 and Aurelo to the Beta frontier at Starbase 80. Pity, but meant to be. “Don’t get me wrong; if our relationship were more casual I’d gladly take Elim to my bed, but I like him complicating my life, and if there was ever fallout from a romantic relationship gone sour, well. There’s enough of a chance of that already, what with this tinker, soldier, tailor, spy persona of his.

“Honestly, Jadzia, I am already in love with Garak, but I’m really not a fan of having my heart yanked out through my third and fourth ribs.”

She nodded, considering. Took a long sip of her cooling tea. “I’m sorry, Julian.” She spoke into her cup.

“Thank you. Until I can trust Garak—if ever—I will be giving my heart to other people.” Bashir glanced at the chronometer, and Jadzia took the hint. Rose to leave.

“Thank you for fixing my hand.” She rounded the desk and bent to kiss him on the cheek. Smelled of sweat and citrus, the faint iron scent of her blood. “Good night, Julian.”

“Goodnight, Jadzia.”

He waited for her to go before shutting off the lights entirely. Admired her slim silhouette as she stepped out into the Promenade, her long dark hair gleaming and blue eyes shining like electric fire. Similar to Elim’s in shade and intensity, without the murderous edge that sometimes surfaced in a sideways glance or a quick turn of his head. Bashir mused that this was part of the reason for his initial attraction to Garak, the burn of danger that he could certainly smell and almost taste. He remembered with some measure of embarrassment his breathless tour of Ops after Garak had initially contacted him during his first weeks aboard Deep Space 9. It had been Jadzia who drew him aside later, whispered that yes, Garak was most likely a spy, they already all knew that, but that Garak had likely just been propositioning Julian for sex. The man had quite a reputation, after all.

Bashir rose, taking his padd with him. Could not help but finish up the last of the article about treating phaser burns as he walked to his quarters. Glanced over an article about the recent attacks by Lethean operatives on certain telepathic species and treating the after effects of brutal mind-rape. The subject in question was Selek Doe, a placeholder name for a Vulcan patient. A violent attack just as Bashir himself had experienced. Had barely survived. 

He snapped the padd off when he found his nausea returning. Hated that he sometimes felt so damned helpless. 

He stopped short when he saw Elim walking several meters ahead of him in the habitation ring. Hands folded behind his back, wearing an exquisitely tailored suit in dark grey with garnet-red panels and a wide collar. Bashir smiled, watching the powerful legs flex as he stepped over the hallway ribs. Strolling, perhaps unaware that Bashir was even there. Taking Garak unawares was rare, but it did happen. Several weeks earlier, deep into a sleepless night, Julian had been lapping the darkened Promenade in a speed walk in effort to tire out his body. Had noticed Garak sitting alone through the windows of his shop, though it had been just past three in the morning. Hand-stitching some intricate collar, two pins in his mouth, expression serene and even a little tired. There had been a grace in the grey hands as he pulled a thread taut, coaxed the needle through a doubled seam. No hardness or intensity, indeed just plain and simple Garak in a moment of calm.

Now, however, Bashir doubted that his close proximity was coincidental. Garak had a habit of materializing whenever he was alone, one his way to his quarters or after a late-night check-in of the infirmary. It was a silent invitation for the Cardassian’s company. 

He wanted to take the offer. Just couldn’t help himself.

“Garak.”

The Cardassian stopped, turned in that quick way of his, smile already stretched over his face. For a brief moment there was honest joy in those eyes, quickly subsumed by a mask of joy instead. In the first kind of happiness there was room for vulnerability; in the mask, real emotion could bounce off without making a mark.

“My dear doctor. How lovely to see you this fine evening! How was your dinner?” He clapped his hands once in front of his chest like a prayerful Vedek.

“Over-spiced. How was yours?” 

“Rather middling, I am afraid. There were no available seats at the replimat, so by the time I found a chair my soup had gone lukewarm. There are far too many people at Versailles today.”

Bashir blinked at the obscure historical reference. He would have to look that one up. Of course Garak would know more about Earth’s history than he did. 

He paused, considering his friend. The shining hair and cedar-like scent of his moisturizer, the slimming panels of the new suit and—were his fingernails newly manicured? Yes. A faint sheen of clear polish. He had gone all out on the chance of an invitation. Bashir felt tenderness soften his heart. 

“Care to join me for a cup of tea before bedtime? I have the surgery rotation tomorrow, so I can’t stay up too late, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on the motifs of idleness and incentive for action in  _ Henry V.” _

“Delighted.” Garak waited for Bashir to join him and walked abreast, already launching into a critique of tennis balls as symbols of idleness. How the gift of a French mistress would have been a much better metaphor. 

Bashir bit his tongue, out of energy to rise properly to the bait. Amused. Happy to just listen to his friend unreel culturally inappropriate suggestions about how Shakespeare could have  _ really _ gotten under the skin of Henry the Great. 

How intriguing to see oneself through the lens of someone so devious and pragmatic. Bashir smiled with true affection at Garak, taking the momentary falter of the other man’s monologue as evidence that he had managed to slip beneath the Cardassian’s armor, just a little. Touched his heart, deep, to the quick. 

**Author's Note:**

> Garak's reference to Versailles is a nod to Marie Antoinette's comment to Madame Du Barry. The French dauphine did not like Du Barry, and her observation that "There are a lot of people at Versailles today" was likely the only thing the young woman ever said to the other.


End file.
